2. We now feel that the first
wife of Capt. Thomas Harris was Audrey Hoare, who was christened at St.
Mary,Aylesbury, Buckingham in 1604
and arrived on the Marmaduke in 1621.

3. The Muster of 1624 shows
that John Woodlief was a kinsman of Capt. Thomas Harris. John Woodlief
wasborn in Dinton, Buckingham,
just two miles from Aylesbury.

How important is this newfound
Aylesbury connection? Playing a hunch, I decided to try an exercise
to see ifthere were any other connections
to Aylesbury. My hunch has paid off in a very big way, much more
than I couldhave ever imagined.

I examined the list for "Neck
of Land" on the Muster of 1624, which, for most of the names, lists the
ages, yearof entry to Virginia, and
the ship on which they came. "Neck of Land" is today known as Curles
Neck. Thenames appear on the list in
the same order they were located along the river beginning at Four Mile
Creek andsweeping downstream almost
to the Shirley Hundred settlement, a total distance along the great bend
of theriver of about five miles.
Using the ages listed on the Muster in 1624, I searched the IGI for parish
christeningrecords that would match up.
Following is the very surprising results. ALL of the towns listed
in ALL CAPS arewithin 7 MILES OF AYLESBURY.
(I have added Edward Gurgaynie in the proper location, although he haddied by 1619 and was not on
the original list.)

Of these 19 men who had settled
at Curles Neck, ten can be readily identified. Nine of those came
from theAylesbury area. Only
one (Luke Boyse) appears to have come from somewhere else. Of the
nine, all but one(Thomas Sheppey) were older
than age 30 and came to Virginia by 1610 or before. Of the nine who
cannot beidentified, five of them also
fit the same criteria of being over age 30 and in Virginia by 1610, including
WilliamVincent and our very own Thomas
Harris. Also, nine of the 19 came in the year 1610 on the various
ships thatcame over with Sir Thomas
Dale to settle at Henricus, a few miles up river from Curles Neck, again
includingWilliam Vincent and Thomas
Harris. In fact, William Bayleys of Aylesbury came over on the Prosperous
withThomas Harris. Of the
nine who came with Dale in 1610, five can be identified, and all five are
from theAylesbury area.

Considering the results of
the above findings, I decided to take it a step farther. I went back
to the Muster of ayear earlier in 1623, the
famous one that lists those killed in the 1622 Indian massacre. I
found ThomasHarwood of Ivinghoe, Buckingham
living at Curles Neck in 1623 but apparently gone by 1624. I also
foundWilliam Clements listed as
killed in the massacre. He was from Hoggeston, Buckingham.
Both towns are justoutside of Aylesbury.
Thomas Harwood would have been age 40 in 1624, and William Clements would
havebeen age 48.

Thomas Sheppey, the one Aylesbury
name on the 1624 list who was under age 30 and came after 1610, led toanother interesting connection.
Thomas Sheppey came over in 1620 on the Supply. This was the ship,
led byJohn Woodlief of Aylesbury,
kinsman to Thomas Harris, that brought the group of colonists over to establishBerkeley Hundred, the same
group credited with observing the first Thanksgiving. Checking that
list, sureenough, I found at least five
other names that appeared to be from the Aylesbury area, and, as if to
emphasizethe finding, they were all
grouped together with Thomas Sheppey on the original list of names.

What conclusions to draw from
all of this?

Well, it is certainly much
more than a coincidence. Something was going on here. I would
suspect that therewas some group, organization,
movement, or whatever operating in the Aylesbury area from which these
menwere recruited to come to
Virginia. They came together and they settled here together.
At this point, I wouldpredict we would find, could
we identify all of them, that the nine men who came with Sir Thomas Dale
in 1610all came from the Aylesbury
area, and this, of course, would include Thomas Harris.

Aylesbury is the central town
in a very distinct valley in the Chiltern Hills to the northwest of London.
The valley isformed by the River Thame,
a branch of the Thames. All of the villages identified stretch along
the banks of theriver from Long Crendon to
Stoke Hammond, a total distance of no more than 15 miles. Aylesbury
is on theriver about halfway between
these two villages.

Whatever group was operating
in Aylesbury in 1610 was still there ten years later, as evidenced by JohnWoodlief, Thomas Sheppey,
and the other Aylesbury natives in the Berkeley Hundred group. In
1624, after thefailure of Berkeley Hundred,
John Woodlief returned to England for a time, leaving his 7 year old daughter
withhis kinsman, Thomas Harris.
Likewise, Thomas Sheppey chose not to go back like many of the BerkeleyHundred group, but instead
went to settle among his fellow Aylesbury acquaintances at Curles Neck.

This leads to another interesting
prediction. Going back to the total list of the 19 men at Curles
Neck, we find13 wives with full information
about when they arrived. Nine of them came in the years 1620 to 1623.
Most ofthem were in their mid twenties
in 1624 while the husbands were around 40. Do these not suggest the
"youngmaidens" sent over here to
marry the colonists. The only one we can identify is Audrey Hoare,
the first wife ofThomas Harris, and, of course,
she is from Aylesbury. If we can determine some maiden names among
therest, I would predict we would
find that they too are from the Aylesbury area. Whatever caused the
group in1610 to come over with Dale,
and then caused the similar group in 1620 to come over with Woodlief, wasprobably at work sending over
Aylesbury brides for its men in Virginia.

This also leads us closer to
understanding the relationship with Sir Thomas Dale. Berkeley Hundred
wassponsored by a group of investors,
with the lead investor being Sir William Throckmorten, the brother of LadyElizabeth Dale, wife of Sir
Thomas Dale. We can now see that there was a connection between the
two groupsof colonists, with the Aylesbury
linkage occurring both at Henricus and at Berkeley. Was the Throckmortenfamily or perhaps Lady Dale
herself one of the central figures behind these early colonization attempts?

So far, I have been unsuccessful
in identifying Thomas Harris in Aylesbury, but I have only attempted it
throughthe parish records on IGI.
For almost 100 years, Harris researchers have looked for him among the
EssexHarrises. No one has
every been able to come up with anything that didn't turn out to be incorrect.
Now,apparently, we know why.
There are a substantial number of Harris families in Aylesbury and the
surroundingBuckingham villages in that
time period, probably even more than in Essex. There are plenty of
other recordsavailable that need to be
checked. I feel it is only a matter of time before we locate something
moresubstantial.

We know Thomas Harris inherited
land from Anne Gurgaynie, the widow of his neighbor. After finallydismissing the idea of the
fictitious daughter named Adria Gurgaynie, we could not explain why he
receivedthat inheritance. Perhaps
now, there is a much better chance of discovering that Thomas Harris was
directlyrelated to Anne Gurgaynie
(brother/sister perhaps). We also now have a better understanding
of why ThomasHarris married the widow,
Joane Vincent, as his second wife. Both William Vincent and Joane
Vincent werelikely to have been Aylesbury
natives as well.

There is plenty to do and plenty
to check out. This only opens the door to some new research possibilities.Chuck Harris, Paul Tobler,
Glenn Gohr, Elizabeth Russo, Fran Fletcher, Barbara Doying, Ken Schwarzburg,perhaps it is time to reactivate
the "Crazy Wombats" group on Harris-Va. I hope to hear from you all
andwelcome anyone's input on
this matter.